Hugo Chavez

Construction worker Pedro Pirela and his neighbors heard a water truck that supplies nearby hotels coming down the road. They rushed to block the street, stopped the driver, and siphoned off the prized liquid. “Water is gold now,” Pirela told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year, saying he and his fellow plotters had no choice but to steal. In fact, Pirela admitted he had ambushed another water truck on a separate occasion. Venezuela’s nationwide water shortage has devastated the country to the point that citizens have had to mimic Pirela’s actions just to stave off dehydration.

The government of Venezuela will celebrate the legacy of its late socialist president Hugo Chavez this month at a coffee shop owned by a radical Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate who has said Israel controls U.S. foreign policy.

The death of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez could spark an intense internal battle between socialist leaders and terrorist Muslim forces such as Hezbollah, which long served as an ally to Chavez, according to foreign policy experts.

Tributes to Venezuela’s socialist strongman Huge Chavez, dead of cancer at age 58, have poured in from rogue states, terrorism sponsors, and Democratic politicians, lauding him for his antagonism to the United States, Israel, and the West. Hollywood celebrities joined in the mourning, hailing him as a man of the people who devoted his rule to helping the poor.